The American Fraternity

Forthcoming From Daylight Books - Fall 2018

The American Fraternity is a mysterious photo and ritual book that lifts the veil on America’s oldest and most influential male tradition. The text comes from a decaying ritual manual from a prominent college fraternity. Seventy-five percent of modern U.S. presidents, senators, justices, and executives have taken arcane oaths of allegiance like the ones it contains. Six decades of ceremonial red wax stain its pages like blood. It is filled with dark power.

My camera has given this secret handbook windows. I shot the pictures over seven years at the fraternity where the old manual comes from, and acquired signed release forms from its members, all UC Berkeley students. The pictures reveal what America’s most influential men do, by tradition, before they go off to lead the professional world. They are the first body of photographs to escape from the dark, two-century-old world of fraternities.

Table of Contents

The Table of Contents comes from the original ritual handbook, with the exception of the last chapter: Presidents of the United States and American Leaders. Here the reader gets to see a staggering list of the fraternity men in America’s highest positions.

Chapter 1. The Preparatory Ceremony

-A freshman steps onto a dark path.

Chapter 2.Union In Honor

-We gaze into fraternity’s eerie and preposterous initiation rite.

Chapter 3.The Grand Lecture

-The proud heritage of the fraternity alongside pictures of its legacy with women.

Chapter 4.The Libations

-As the fraternity toasts its white forefathers, we see today’s awkward racial reality.

Chapter 5.Memorial Service

-A brother dies and we attend the funeral.

Chapter 6.Customs and Ceremonies

-We find the bottom of brotherhood in a festival worthy of Dionysus and bureaucracy reminiscent of Kafka.

Chapter 7.Presidents of the United States and American Leaders

-A long list of important leaders shows just how powerful fraternity men become in America.

Chapters

Chapter 1.The Preparatory Ceremony

A freshman decides to pledge the fraternity. A dark passageway opens for his password. 8 pages.

Chapter 2. Union In Honor

Here we discover the sacred oath’s preposterous incantations. The pictures show us men getting hoodwinked into joining a gang of rakes. 14 pages.

Chapter 3. The History

The fraternity’s idealistic origins look rather quaint next to photographs of their legacy with the opposite sex. 40 pages.

Chapter 4. The LibationsMany fraternities resisted the pressure of the civil rights movement to integrate until the 1970s. Now, a small handful of members of color carry on the fraternity’s tradition of exclusion. We see today’s awkward racial reality next to high-flown toasts to the founding fathers. 14 pages.

Chapter 5. Memorial Service

Fraternities are notoriously dangerous places, not least for hazing and alcohol related activities. Here is the funeral I shot of a brother in the fraternity. Short chapter, 12 pages.

Chapter 6. Customs and Ceremonies

The brothers celebrate new pledges and dead alumni in late-night festivals. Nietzsche once lamented that the modern world had nothing like the Greek festival of Dionysus, where the rules of society were ecstatically broken. But fraternities secretly keep the god alive. 40 pages.

Chapter 7. Presidents of the United States and American Leaders

At last we arrive at the larger truth: America has always been a fraternity. The final chapter lists the American leaders who were in fraternities. So many modern U.S. Presidents, their Cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, Senators and Representatives, CEOs, university presidents, Bishops of the church, doctors, lawyers, fathers, and of course, voters, are fraternity boys. 16 pages.